Two months later, Wiz Khalifa used the term “mumble rap” on Hot 97 to describe “lil homies” who “don’t want to rap” as hip-hop’s dominant fad, prompted by an Ebro question regarding Lil Yachty and Lil Uzi Vert.īut it was Pete Rock who truly popularized the term in September when he criticized Yachty in a couple of Instagram captions, following the upstart’s comments on the Notorious B.I.G. 1 single, “Panda” - a song so wildly unintelligible that the rapper spent 90 percent of his video interviews last year repeating the lyrics slowly so that fans could understand what he’s even saying on it. The sentiment has been kicking around since last April, thanks largely to Desiigner’s no.
Which brings us to the other way to think about “mumble rap” - as a reclaimed pejorative that fails as a musical description, and that gets trickier to define the more rappers it encompasses.
They’re two very different personas who make very different rap music. I say “apparently” because - outside of being young, and being black, and being rappers - Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage don’t have much in common. There are two ways to think about “mumble rap.” First, as a loose contemporary hip-hop subgenre that apparently includes rappers such as Lil Uzi Vert and 21 Savage as well as the other, aforementioned examples. Kendrick Lamar Will Never Rap Harder Than He’s Rapping on ‘Damn.’
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